Friday, March 13, 2015

Old Hollywood Announced [Android: Netrunner]

This is the fifth pack in the SanSan cycle, which we should see the first pack for soon. Let's see what it has to offer:

We get a close-up of that Identity in a sec, but that Shaper card is interesting. Fan Site is a resource that reads: "Whenever the Corp scores an agenda, add Fan Site to your score area as an agenda worth 0 agenda points."

Obviously this card seems meant to power things like Frame Job and Data Dealer... neither are which are in Shaper, and are both two influence cards. Fan Site is only one influence though, so that does create some interesting choices. Perhaps a Valencia deck could use it to really keep the pressure on the Corp, even when they manage to score something? Data Dealer is a great card... but generally only gets used in rare cases that you get a Shi.Kyu stuck to you, or if you're playing Iain Stirling, or something. I guess we should expect some other cards in this cycle that allow us to spend/lose agendas, but as it stands, I'm not sure I could find space for it yet.

Now we're talking. NBN has almost always been a very fast advance sort of faction, and I guess this would still fit that role. You won't have to auto-lose to the runner getting a major Medium run on R&D (since NBN decks have slightly higher agenda densities with all one and two point agendas). You could also install multiple 3/2s on the later turns with the knowledge that at least ONE of them will be scored (unless it somehow gets trashed). If you're running Fast Advance, it's certainly possible you'll get to five quickly... then drawing an Agenda, Fast Track, installing two agendas could quickly win you the game, probably just as the runner is fully set up. I quite like it. I also like that I could run a much poorer agenda density in this sort of deck, because having several agendas in my hand isn't necessarily a disaster. I'll definitely be giving it a try.

Apparently a 'Sensie' is a movie that will provide a more full sensory experience? I don't know. The Agenda itself seems alright. 3/1 isn't so bad, but I imagine this is one you'd try to trick your opponent into stealing, perhaps to attempt to get a 5/3 pushed through. I feel like that may be tough to bluff though- NBN ICE isn't notoriously good at stopping things. Perhaps as an early game trick though, I could throw a 5/3 behind a Tollbooth (or Wraparound, if I'm lucky), try to get this stolen, and end up doing pretty well. Combined with the above, they could give me this bonus basically for no additional pain to me, if there are other agendas they steal beforehand. Or, install two 3/1s, and they access this, and you score the other one for practically nothing. Overall, not bad.

I like this one a bit more. Money is good. 4/2 is fine. And again, if you manage to get them to steal another agenda first, you're getting 5 credits practically for free! I can't hate credits in NBN. Something I'll definitely consider given a shot to in some builds, but probably not a strict fast advance build (NAPD Contracts is better for that role).

Finally, we have:

Meh. If I'm hoping to trash a lot of R&D, I'm likely playing Noise. If I manage to get all three copies of Spoilers in play, I'm trashing 3 cards for every agenda they score. They probably need 3-4 agendas to win, so 2-3 chances to trash things.... feels like a 'meh' to me. This seems pretty good against NBN Fast Advance, in particular, where they likely can't defend Archives effectively... but such a deck will have Jackson Howard since its in-faction. I don't know. I'm sure I'll see this played against me plenty (some of my opponents get very excited about trashing R&D cards- it's part of the reason something like half my games as Corp have been against Noise), but I don't know that I'll bother.

Great spoilers overall though- some new NBN tech to look forward to, and some hints of new deck archetypes coming up. Pretty excited to see it come to be!